Community Partnerships for Community College Student Success

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When thinking of those who can make a difference for community college students striving to gain the knowledge and credentials they seek, the usual suspects come to mind -- faculty, staff and administrators. Large-scale institutional change through which colleges improve their ability to serve their students is usually viewed as an expert-driven process best left to the professionals.

Too often left out of the equation are partnerships with community members, agencies and organizations, which can be tremendous assets and essential ingredients for long-term success. This is particularly the case for community colleges that may not have as high a profile or as many resources as larger 4-year institutions. But effective community engagement can be a tricky process without a proper starting point and roadmap.

Last week at DREAM 2017, the annual conference organized by Achieving the Dream (AtD), nearly 2,300 attendees came together to tackle the challenges of increasing student success. During the President's Colloquium, leaders from AtD colleges deliberated on what it means for colleges to become anchor institutions in their communities, and shared their community engagement challenges and strategies. These leaders realize that without deep, durable community partnerships, their colleges are unlikely to meet their student success goals.

For colleges to fulfill their obligation to provide socio-economic mobility for their students, they will need to work in new and better ways with K-12, community-based organizations and employers. To fortify these efforts, Public Agenda, with support from The Kresge Foundation, designed a guide to help colleges with the planning and execution of community engagement strategies.

Introduced at DREAM 2017, Success Is What Counts is a starting point to ensure that community engagement efforts begin on strong footing. It outlines general principles of effective engagement and provides tools and resources to support colleges in their community outreach and relationships. This includes a discussion starter on improving community partnerships and a self-assessment tool for facilitators.

Download Success Is What Counts, now available to all higher education leaders and others interested in strengthening new creative partnerships on behalf of better outcomes for all students.

Help Public Agenda support initiatives to fuel progress on critical issues, including education, health care and community engagement, by making a contribution.

You’re Probably Wrong: Group Polarization and Going to Extremes

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In Going to Extremes, Cass Sunstein paints a grim picture. Men are prone to a variety of serious failings, and those failings only intensify through the processes of groups. Bolstering his argument, Sunstein points to numerous studies that have revealed humanity’s flaws. Stanley Milgram, for example, demonstrated that a majority of recruited participants could be convinced to administer what they thought were dangerously high shocks to an actor who responded with increasingly dramatic expressions of pain. “What Milgram revealed,” Sunstein writes, “is that the heuristic – in favor of obedience of apparently trusted authorities – does not always work well. In real-world cases, it leads to terrible moral errors” (Sunstein, 2009).

Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment similarly seems to reveal humanity’s darkness. Healthy, average participants were randomly assigned to serve as ‘prison guards’ or ‘inmates.’ Within days, the guards displayed “growing cruelty, aggression, and dehumanization,” while the prisoners – after an initial attempt at uprising – were crushed; becoming “subdued and ‘zombie-like’” (Sunstein, 2009). The simulation had grown so dire and grotesque that the experiment had to be ended early. After just 5 days. Sunstein summarizes the lessons learned from this dark look into human nature:

In pointing to the apparent normality of those involved in Nazi war crimes, Zimbardo gives a social science twist to Hannah Arendt’s claims about the ‘banality of evil.’ And in explaining what makes atrocities possible, Zimbardo places a large emphasis on deindividualization – a process by which both perpetrators and victims become essentially anonymous and are thereby transformed into a type or a role. (Sunstein, 2009)

For Sunstein, these studies highlight a deeper challenge. Human beings are embedded in a social context, and that context serves as a significant driver of individual actions and opinions. Hearing friends express a view makes a person socially inclined to express the same view. Deliberating groups tend towards extremism in the direction of the pre-deliberation median because nobody wants to take the social risk of expressing an unpopular view. College students playing prison guards give each other permission – or may even encourage each other – to act in increasingly horrific ways. We each take our cues from the social context we’re embedded in; a problematic heuristic because the signals we receive are so often morally or factually wrong.

This presents a potentially paralyzing conundrum: if your own perceptions and opinions are merely a product of your social environment, how can you ever know what is truly good or right? Sunstein offers a small prescription of hope, arguing that “many human beings are able to resist situational pressures and to engage in forms of heroism. Even when group polarization is under way, some people, some of the time, will hold fast to their convictions and stay where they are, especially if group members go in destructive or violent directions” (Sunstein, 2009). Sunstein further argues that the policy prescription of ‘checks and balances’ serves as a bulwark against polarization. Indeed, “the institutions of our Constitution reflect an implicit fear of polarization, creating a range of checks on potentially ill-considered judgments.” For example, the constitution explicitly denies the president’s power to declare war, thus ensuring that a single person can not “do so without sufficient deliberation and debate among diverse people” (Sunstein, 2009).

It is reasonable to think that checks and balances provides some protection against polarization, yet the idea of deliberation “among diverse people” is laughable coming from an era when ‘diversity’ consisted entirely of the diversity between straight, white, property-owning men in cities and straight, white, property-owning men in rural areas. This narrow notion of diversity points to a significant oversight in Sunstein’s work: he puts a lot of attention on political diversity while giving very little thought to other forms of diversity. For example, Sunstein notes that “confident people are more prone to polarization” but he gives little attention to the constant social admonishment women receive for not being confident enough (Kay & Shipman, 2014). Perhaps, then, it should not be surprising that groups with higher numbers of women perform better at a range of tasks than equal or male-dominated groups (Woolley, Chabris, Pentland, Hashmi, & Malone, 2010). This isn’t because women are smarter or better, but because women are more likely to be socialized for group problem-solving. Indeed, Woolley et al. find their result to be “largely mediated by social sensitivity,” a skill which the women in their study displayed more strongly than men. Woolley et al. further argue that “groups, like individuals, do have characteristic levels of intelligence.” People socialized for group processes, then, tend to make groups smarter while individuals socialized with the destructive features of toxic masculinity – such as over confidence in their individual perspective and brash confrontation with any form of dissent – make for less productive groups. We don’t need individualistic heroes who “hold fast to their convictions” no matter what; we need thoughtful collaborators ensure that a variety of voices are heard.

Rather than reveal the risks of deliberation, these anecdotes highlight exactly why group deliberation is needed. Sunstein argues that the Stanford Prison Experiment exposes the ‘banality of evil,’ but Arendt didn’t mean this phrase the way Sunstein interprets it: that humanity’s evil is mundane. Rather, as Arendt writes, evil “possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension. It can overgrow and lay waste the whole world precisely because it spreads like a fungus on the surface. It is ‘thought-defying,’ as I said, because thought tries to reach some depth, to go to roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustrated because there is nothing. That is its ‘banality’ (Arendt, 1963).” Evil, in its empty banality, cannot survive the rigors of reasoned thought and debate; it thrives when these habits are suppressed, when there is mere lip service hollowly lauding diversity. This is exactly why Bernard Manin argues for the normalization of debate as an essential feature of deliberation (Manin, 2005). As a political ideal, debate, isn’t about finding out whether you and I agree; it is about considering all possible reasons, all possible perspectives, and then co-creating solutions which none of us could have accomplished on our own. That is, as Dewey calls it (Dewey & Rogers, 2012), the essence of democracy as a way of living.

___

Thanks to Joshua Miller for the Arendt quote
Arendt, H. (July 24, 1963). [Letter to Gershom Scholem].

Dewey, J., & Rogers, M. L. (2012). The public and its problems: An essay in political inquiry: Penn State Press.

Kay, K., & Shipman, C. (2014). The confidence gap. The Atlantic, 14, 1-18.

Manin, B. (2005). Democratic Deliberation: Why We Should Promote Debate Rather Than Discussion. Paper presented at the Program in Ethics and Public Affairs Seminar, Princeton University.

Sunstein, C. R. (2009). Going to extremes: How like minds unite and divide: Oxford University Press.

Woolley, A. W., Chabris, C. F., Pentland, A., Hashmi, N., & Malone, T. W. (2010). Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups. Science, 330(6004), 686-688. doi:10.1126/science.1193147

 

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assessing the congressional town meeting protests, 2009 and 2017

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In 2009, when Democratic House members went home to discuss the Affordable Care Act with their constituents, they faced disruptive questions and protests, often from people loosely affiliated with the Tea Party. The protesters cited such supposed evils as Death Panels. This year, when Republican House members go home to discuss repealing the same legislation, they face disruptive questions and protests from supporters of the ACA. In at least one case, a Member of Congress decried the Death Panels that are supposedly now in existence and was hooted down as a liar by his constituents. In both 2009 and 2017, many Members of Congress have decided not to hold so-called Town Meetings at all because of the prospect of protests that would be covered on mass media.

2009

2017

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was prone to lament the protests in 2009 but welcome them in 2017. That sounds like hypocrisy, but the comparison is more complicated. First, the same behavior can be appropriate or inappropriate depending on its purpose and content. Making such distinctions requires judgment, but judgment is essential in politics and is not merely a form of bias. In other words, the right judgment may be that the protests of 2017 are helpful even though those of 2009 were harmful. One reason may be that the protesters of 2017 are speaking truth, and those of 2009 were repeating lies. I acknowledge that’s a simplification, but it may be roughly correct.

Second, if we treat a political act (such as organizing or disrupting a public meeting) as a general category, without reference to its purpose or outcome, we still must weigh several values. Disrupting a meeting is bad for civility but may enhance free speech and agency. Only a purist about civil dialogue would automatically oppose any form of disruption.

I took a somewhat unusual position in ’09. I argued that deliberation–i.e., genuinely listening and being open to changing one’s mind–plays an important role in a democracy. When protesters shut down events sponsored by Democrats, or when Democrats stopped holding open meetings in fear of protests, deliberation suffered. This was a shame because we are all badly limited, morally and cognitively, and we need opportunities to hear from the other side.

However, I said then, a major cause of the disruption was the design of these events. In a truly deliberative event, such as a classic New England Town Meeting, the participants make a collective decision that is not pre-determined by the organizer. To make such a discussion go well requires rules that give people and arguments equal time and organize the debate. An event that is billed as a “Town Meeting” is a fake deliberation if the politician-organizer has already made up his or her mind and just wants to persuade the audience. Giving members of the public a chance to react for a minute at the mic. is a recipe for angry responses. Such meetings are so predictably bad that they provide frequent moments of comedy on Parks & Rec:

The solution would be to reserve events that are billed as deliberative for genuine deliberations. Citizens would be invited to discuss and design solutions, and the organizers would be open to any outcomes. An example is our successful recent experiment with a Citizens Initiative Review in Massachusetts.

When, on the other hand, a representative already holds a position on an issue and wants to persuade the public, she or he is entitled to screen the audience, to talk only through the media, or otherwise to control the format. At the same time, opponents are entitled to exercise their rights of assembly and petition to argue the opposite position. If the politician chooses to speak in an open room, then she should expect disruptions. If the politician screens the audience, she should expect people outside with signs.

Several additional issues arise for me:

  1. What should matter to protesters is winning. You win if you get more than 50% of the public to support you actively, e.g., by voting in 2018. A protest that may inspire your side and even encourage more participation may also alienate the undecided. Everyone involved in a social movement should read Bayard Rustin’s 1965 article “From Protest to Politics” to remember the difference between moral purity and political effectiveness. Perhaps “What would the median voter think about this?” is not the only important question, but it is always one question to consider explicitly.
  2. The number of people who are present at these events is trivially small in a nation of almost 320 million. The protests matter because they are covered by mass and social media. Controversy and outrage are profitable for media companies. That means that moments of disruption will receive disproportionate attention, and most moments of actual dialogue will be lost. An effective protest may have at least two mediated audiences: supporters whom it inspires, and opponents whom it outrages. They will see the same event in different media contexts. Smart political activists think their way through to the media coverage in all channels.
  3. Listening is a political virtue, even if it’s not the only virtue. Speaking out of turn at a meeting, or drowning out the main speaker, may be the right thing to do. It allows other people to hear you and it honors your right to a voice. But it does have a cost: the audience can’t hear the person you have drowned out or preempted. It’s appropriate to reduce that cost by (for example) interrupting briefly and then yielding back the floor.
  4. Politicians who appear at open public meetings before hostile audiences to defend their settled positions are not strictly deliberating. They have made up their minds and they seek to use their influence to affect public opinion. However, by physically appearing before their critics, they demonstrate vulnerability. As Danielle Allen argues in Talking to Strangers, democracy requires vulnerability. It is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for valuable interactions between people who are strong and weak. Therefore, Republican Members of Congress who continue to face protesters in open meetings deserve some credit–which takes nothing away from the protesters who challenge them.
  5. A protest is a moment of potential, but only if the protesters find other ways of acting together politically. In turn, that requires members of the protest movement to form durable relationships and to develop and extend their skills, usually in the context of organizations to which they belong. In a very important recent interview, Marshall Ganz says, “Many Democrats confuse messaging with educating, marketing with organizing. They think it is all about branding when it is really about relational work. You engage people with each other, creating collective capacity. That’s how you sustain and grow and get leadership.”

NCDD Discount on Dynamic Facilitation Training

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We are pleased to share the announcement below from NCDD member Rosa Zubizarreta of DiaPraxis about an opportunity for NCDD members to receive a discount on an upcoming training in dynamic facilitation methods. We encourage you to learn more about the opportunity below!
Rosa shared this piece via our great Submit-to-Blog Form. Do you have news or thoughts you want to share with the NCDD network? Just click here to submit your news post for the NCDD Blog!

Advanced 3-day facilitation training & special offer for NCDD folks

Are you interested in effective ways to help people become curious and interested about differences, instead of defensive and threatened?

Last time I was invited to Maine to offer a Dynamic Facilitation workshop, here’s what one participant wrote afterward about the results of this work: “…a dynamic shift in the capacity of the participants and the group as a whole to hold diversity and complexity with their eyes and hearts wide open.”

It seems to me that these kinds of outcomes are needed more than ever. At the same time, to uplevel our game, we may need to learn to do things somewhat differently. In Germany, Dynamic Facilitation is often described as “ein ganz anders moderieren” (“a very different way of facilitating”). How accurate is that? Below is more info about what we do and how we do it, so you can decide for yourself.

But first, a word about the special offer. One is, as an NCDD member, you qualify for the super-low community fee: $425 early-bird rate, $525 regular rate. And in addition, we have arranged for a two-week extra time period where NCDD members can register at the early-bird rate: so instead of March 1st, you have until March 15th.  Of course, if you already know you want to sign up, here is the link.

Ok, back to what makes this work distinctive:

1) Heart-centered listening. What might “active listening” look like if our aim as facilitators or mediators was not to “be impartial”, but instead, to be “multi-partial” and to really support each participant? In this work, we take a highly relational approach. Our intention as facilitators or mediators is to establish a connection with each person, to really “get” what they are wanting to express, to let them know what we are hearing, and to create a space where they can hear themselves.

As we do this, others are better able to hear that person, too. After facilitating high-friction meetings, it’s quite common that a participant will come up afterward and confess, “I had never really heard before, what so-and-so was trying to say, until you reflected it back to him… It’s like some part of my brain would shut off, whenever he (or she) would start to speak.” While there’s more nuance to heart-centered listening than simply reflecting back what someone is saying, this is one key feature of our work.

2) Welcoming initial solutions. What would happen if as facilitators or mediators, we viewed each person’s “initial solutions” as their best creative effort to date to make sense of a complex situation and to come up with an appropriate response? Of course most initial solutions are usually quite limited, as they are based on the narrow amount of data each person has from their own vantage point in the larger system. And of course we want to support participants in moving beyond initial solutions!

Yet what we’ve discovered is that by welcoming and listening deeply to each initial solution, participants are much more able to take in new information afterward. Once they start hearing one anothers’ initial solutions, along with one another’s various concerns about the various solutions… many of which correspond to divergent ways of framing the initial problem… participants are quick to realize the limitations of these initial proposals. At the same time, by creating a relational, heart-centered space that honors each person’s best creative effort to date, we can easily build on the positive seeds within each of these partial perspectives. So, we are “going slow” in order to “go fast”…

3) Receiving and translating critical energy. As facilitators or mediators, what would happen if we viewed any criticism as a sign that the person offering the criticism, really cares about a positive outcome? Furthermore, what would happen if we understood our role as being the “designated catcher” on the team, so that each participant can more easily stay in their creative brain rather than shifting into their reactive brain?

In this work, we create a trusted space for the co-existence of creative thinking AND critical thinking by inviting participants to re-direct any charged or critical comments toward us, instead of toward one another. That way, each participant can speak freely and be heard, with less likelihood of setting off reactive triggers. This might sound a bit challenging — all of that energy directed toward us, as the facilitator or mediator?? I know it sounds paradoxical, yet one of the benefits that practitioners of this work frequently report, is a greater sense of ease in working with conflict.

4) Harvesting each contribution. What would happen if we saw each contribution as a piece of the larger puzzle that is emerging, and our own role as creating a faithful map of that larger whole, while staying in “beginner’s mind” or “don’t know” space? As we record each contribution, it adds another layer to the trust that is building. Each person is being heard, each offering is being gathered…. not just the “major decisions”, not just whatever the facilitator deems as important. Each bit is being gathered, for our collective work of bricolage… And, as we pause to verify with participants whether what’s on the chart paper is an accurate reflection of their contributions, it creates yet another opportunity to deepen the shared weave of meaning-making that is taking place.

So, those are four key elements of this practice. You are welcome to experiment with any one or more of these elements on your own. I’ve also written a book that goes into much more detail about what it looks like, when all of these elements are used together. I love it when people tell me that they have been able to start exploring this approach just by reading the book! There are also free articles and short videos available on our webpage.

At the same time, I’ve also heard this practice described as “simple, but not easy.” So if you’d like an opportunity to practice in a supportive context, you are warmly welcome to attend our upcoming workshop in Maine.

In this highly experiential learning journey, we will have plenty of opportunities to see Dynamic Facilitation in action and to experience it as participants. We will also be practicing it in small groups, where you’ll be receiving appreciative feedback from peers as well as in-the-moment coaching and support from the instructor.

We’ll also explore various special topics, including how to work with power differences, how to engage in “skillful interrupting” as a facilitator, how to manage flow when emotions are high, and how to adapt this approach when working with two people instead of with a group.

I’ll close with another quote from a participant in the 2015 Maine workshop:

“…an elegantly simple process for helping people call their power back from interpersonal or group conflict, and recast it in the direction of the change they want to see in the world.”

If you feel called, I look forward to having you join us!  Here’s the link for signing up.

If you’d like more info first, the sign-up page also has links to how this work is being used in Europe for the participatory design of public policy.

After the Water War: Co-Managed Water Services in Cochabamba

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Case: After the Water War: Co-Managed Water Services in Cochabamba

Feb 27 '17
Author: 
Romain Busnel
In 1999, a broad coalition of local actors from civil society protested against price increases and community water system expropriation following the privatization of water services in the city of Cochabamba. This paper aims to provide some information about the co-management of the water system after the Water War.

Popular Consultation in Tambogrande (Piura, Peru)

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Case: Popular Consultation in Tambogrande (Piura, Peru)

Feb 27 '17
Author: 
Romain Busnel
In 1999, the Ministry of Energy and Mining launched a development program in connection with the mining industry in Tambogrande (Piura Departement, Peru), without any previous debate or consultation with the people living there. The mayor of the municipality approved the project and the Canadian mining company, Manhattan Minerals Corporation,...

Optimism and Futility

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People often tell me that they find my writing optimistic. Indeed, this is a primary reason people frequently give me for why they enjoy my writing. It’s just so optimistic. Well, not saccharine-sweet, over-the-top optimistic, but optimistic nonetheless.

I find this hilarious.

I wouldn’t self-identify as an optimist, and those who know me are likely to be familiar with my habit of giving a big teenage eye roll to concepts like ‘hope’ while periodically ranting about why hope is not required. But perhaps I’m an optimist despite myself.

Or perhaps I simply spend too much time reading Camus, who famously argues that we must find joy and meaning in futile and hopeless labor. Indeed, we must imagine Sisyphus happy.

We live in dark times. Every day the news seems to get worse, and our social challenges run so deep and come from so many directions that it seems nearly impossible that we could even begin to tackle them at all.

But that is no reason not to try.

And this, I suppose, is why I get labeled an optimist. Given the choice between action and paralyzed grief, I’d choose action every time. It’s really the only choice there is.

I’d like to think that the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice; that if we work hard enough and fight forcefully enough we can indeed leave this world a little better than we found it.

But the truth is, none of that matters. It hardly matters if all this amounts to is hopeless and futile labor because that is all there is – inaction isn’t a viable option.

All that is left is to return to our rock, to keep on pushing even when we know that there is no point. We keep on fighting for justice – ceaselessly, tirelessly working towards that vision; straining with all our might – because to do otherwise is untenable. As Camus writes, the struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.

Indeed, one must imagine Sisyphus happy.

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Participatory Budgeting (Ilo, Peru)

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Case: Participatory Budgeting (Ilo, Peru)

Feb 27 '17
Author: 
Romain Busnel
Ilo, is a port city in southwestern Peru, in the Moquegua department, with some 60.000 inhabitants. To handle the problems of contamination and chaotic urban expansion, many NGOs, neighborhood committees and associations joined forces in collaboration with the municipal government, led by a left-wing coalition since 1980, to develop the...

End of Life: What Should We Do for Those Who Are Dying? (NIFI Issue Guide)

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The 23-page issue guide, End of Life: What Should We Do for Those Who Are Dying?, written by National Issues Forums Institute and published on their site on November 2016. This issue guide provides three options for deliberation for participants to explore end-of-life decisions, as people are able to live longer and options for “right to die” become possibilities; what is best for those who are dying? In addition to the issue guide, there is a moderator’s guide and a post-forum questionnaire, all available to download on NIFI’s site here.

From NIFI…

What ought to be done at the end of life is both a personal and public decision. As our population ages, it is becoming a matter of great concern for the entire nation. Diseases that would have been death sentences a few decades ago are now often treatable.

This guide explores end-of-life decisions and examines options and trade-offs inherent in this sensitive and universal issue. Medical advances make it more likely that we will care for relatives in their final days, facing decisions regarding their illnesses or death—as well as our own. Even those who never face such choices will pay for them through tax dollars and the cost of insurance premiums. And as more states consider passing “right-to-die” laws similar to the one that took effect in Oregon in 1997, this debate may become a local one.

Under most circumstances, end-of-life decisions remain difficult and uncomfortable. A Consumer Reports survey found that 86 percent of those polled wanted to die at home. But fewer than half of the respondents over age 65 had living wills detailing their dying wishes, leaving them at the mercy of hospitals and stressed-out families forced to decide on their behalf. In 1990, the US Supreme Court affirmed an individual’s “right to die.” Later, in 1997, the court upheld New York and Washington state laws banning physician-assisted death, leaving it for individual states to decide their legality. These rulings established legal precedence for a national conversation.

This issue guide asks: What should society allow, and support, at the end of life? It presents three different ways of looking at the problem and suggests possible actions appropriate to each.

Option One: “Maintain Quality of Life”
That means when continued efforts to keep terminally ill patients alive a few more days or weeks result in needless pain and suffering, life-support treatment should be discontinued. At that point, caregiving efforts should be devoted to keeping patients comfortable and pain free.

Option Two: “Preserve Life at All Costs”
Do everything we can to prevent death. This means sparing no expense to extend the lives of those who are sick. It should be difficult for doctors to give up on patients, and the end must not be brought about by deliberate medical neglect or intervention. Right-to-die laws must be repealed.

Option Three: “My Right, My Choice”
The freedoms we value so highly in choosing how we live should not be taken away from us at the end of our lives. People should have the right to end their own lives and to enlist their doctors in helping them to die when a terminal illness leaves nothing to look forward to but higher levels of pain and suffering.

Preview the trailer for this issue guide’s starter video above and buy the video and full issue guide on NIFI’s site here.

NIF-Logo2014About NIFI Issue Guides
NIFI’s Issue Guides introduce participants to several choices or approaches to consider. Rather than conforming to any single public proposal, each choice reflects widely held concerns and principles. Panels of experts review manuscripts to make sure the choices are presented accurately and fairly. By intention, Issue Guides do not identify individuals or organizations with partisan labels, such as Democratic, Republican, conservative, or liberal. The goal is to present ideas in a fresh way that encourages readers to judge them on their merit.

Follow on Twitter: @NIForums

Resource Link: www.nifi.org/en/issue-guide/end-life